Saturday

Health Boards (Earliest Origins and History)

The earliest health boards (or special magistracies) appeared during the time of the Black Death (1348).

They were set up to help coordinate the treatment and control of the plague which was especially devastating southern European cities.

They were initially temporary emergency councils, and hence disbanded as the threat from the Black Death subsided.

Initial Locations (1348):

Florence

Pistoia

Venice

Permanent Health Boards:

Did not appear in Italy until around the mid-fifteenth century.

The city of Milan led the way with securing this valuable public body.

Permanent health boards then subsequently developed in Palermo and Turin (1576).

Interestingly, these early boards were composed mainly of notaries & beaurocrats from outside the medical profession.

Health Boards & Bubonic Plague Control (1575-1578):

The plague crisis of 1575–1578 had a major impact on public health and medical history.

The first attempts were now being made, through detailed health-board statistics, to track the progress of diseases such as bubonic plague.

Doctors also now understood the importance of engaging in politics & instructing princes & beaurocrats on public health.

With the new more extensive health-board records, plague writers also looked at new forms of plague writing - now including personal trauma, pathos, dark comedy, and lessons into the narratives they spun.

Plague death counts were now not the only important records that were kept.

Some of the later masterpieces of plague literature can be traced to influences from this time, including Camus & Defoe.